War Against the Seneca: The French Expedition of 1687

16 pp. "On June 13, 1687, Marquis de Denonville led an army from Canada, which consisted of 832 colonial regulars, more than 900 Canadian militia, and some 400 Indian allies, to eliminate the Seneca as competitors in the international fur trade. The Seneca had been dealing with the English, and the French wanted to keep control of the lucrative fur trade. The conflict was part of what became known as the Beaver Wars, as the Iroquois also struggled to control their trade. Native American tribes fought each other, too, in trying to gain power in the fur trade. Denonville writes that on July 13, the French force, closing in on Ganondagan, were attacked by a Seneca force of 800, but after a short engagement "they soon resolved to fly." Denonville described the French casualties as 5 or 6 killed and 20 wounded, while the Seneca casualties were 45 killed and 60 wounded. However, a British report, based on interviews of Seneca warriors, states that the Seneca force consisted of 450 people, including 350 boys, 100 men, and 5 women "who engaged as well as the men". The British report states that most of the villagers had been moved that day to Cajouge (Cayuga) and some to a lake to the south. "As soon as the women and children were fled, their fired their own Castles." L'Abbe de Belmont wrote that the Seneca "came to reconnoiter us and then went to burn their village and take to flight." Upon the French arrival at the village on the 14th, Denonville reports, "we found it burned" and a nearby fort abandoned. The French killed "a vast quantity of hogs", and, from the four Seneca villages they visited, destroyed 1.2 million bushels of stored and standing corn. The force turned west and destroyed the village of Totiakton (aka Tiotohatton or La Conception) before returning to their boats at Irondequoit. After the battle, the community movement was checked by the disaster of the French invasion and turned eastward. The two villages of Gandagora and Gandougarae seem to have joined in this eastward movement and to have settled first at Canandaigua and later in the region east of Canandaigua Lake. During the American Revolutionary War, the Sullivan Expedition of 1779 attacked the Seneca in scattered towns at Geneva, Canandaigua and along Seneca Lake (New York)."